Completion
by Tajjas
Summary: Sam is looking for a fifth person to complete his team, and Beth has about had it with her current assignment.
1. Forcing the Issue

_Sam needs a fifth person for his team and Beth has had it with her team in New York._

* * *

"Hey, Coop, are you coming to dinner with us or what?" Mick asked, sticking his head into the office.

"I was planning on it," Sam said, looking up from the papers on his desk. "Are you leaving now?"

"As soon as Gina and Prophet finish getting changed." Mick stepped inside, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall. "Was that the director I saw heading out?"

"Yeah."

"What did he want?"

There was more than a little suspicion in his tone, and privately Sam was glad that Mick had been out in the gym sparring with Prophet and Gina when the director had arrived. While Prophet seemed to take the fact that he was still an agent pending in stride, Sam knew that it bothered Mick. Truth be told it bothered him too since he'd expected the director to promote Prophet to full agent when Gina had joined the team, but Mick in particular wasn't very good at hiding his feelings when it came to things like that.

"He dropped off a list of available agents and suggested that I look at filling that last slot of ours," Sam responded, nodding to the list in front of him rather than acknowledging the suspicion. Theirs was supposed to be a five man team, that had been the agreement since the beginning, but he and Mick and Prophet had worked well enough together that Sam hadn't been in any hurry to bring others in. Gina had been the first person that he'd seen that he'd thought would be a good fit, and while he'd quickly been proven right despite her lack of field experience, he doubted that they'd get that lucky again. He'd managed to keep the director at bay fairly well thus far in the months since Gina's arrival, but it seemed that he wasn't going to be able to keep it up much longer.

Mick scowled, although it was hard to stay whether he was actually displeased at the idea of another teammate or if it was just his displeasure with the director carrying over. Knowing him it was probably the latter; he usually enjoyed being in a group of people.

Sam shook his head and stuffed the list into his pack as he stood. He'd take a better look at it this weekend and hope that something jumped out. And if it didn't, he'd go check out the current academy class or start looking through rejected FBI applications. That was how he'd found Prophet and Gina, after all; maybe lightening would strike again. "So who won the sparring match?" he asked as he set his pack on his desk and reached for his jacket.

Mick's scowl shifted into a smile. "Me. Although if Prophet actually acknowledged that there were _rules_ for sparring I'd kick his arse a lot more often. Plus Gina's been picking up all kinds of nasty stuff from him, and I'll tell you, man, she's got some sharp elbows."

Sam grinned in return. Prophet would never win a martial arts tournament, but the mishmash of techniques and street tricks that would get him kicked out before the first bout was over did make him an interesting sparring partner. And Sam wasn't at all surprised that Gina had been picking up on those tricks, he had a more than sneaking suspicion that Prophet was teaching her some of them on purpose. "So does that mean that he's buying the first round or that she is?"

* * *

"So it was a loner, specifically a teenage male Caucasian with a preternatural interest in chemistry and a history of fire-starting. Gee, why does that sound familiar?" Beth didn't wait for an answer. "Oh, right, that's what I said two weeks ago."

Thornburg and Rilke both gave her sideways glances but neither responded. Not that she'd expected them to. They were the main reason that the team had wasted their entire time here tracking down and interviewing the local ex-con population, after all, despite the fact that absolutely none of said ex-cons had a history of bomb-making _or_ arson.

She shook her head. She'd told them that those interviews were a dead end, that they'd be better off focusing on the local schools and specifically the high school chemistry classes since the profile said that the arsonist would be a Caucasian male between sixteen and eighteen and anyone who knew anything about bomb making could have told them that the chemicals weren't the typical fertilizer and kitchen cleaner sort, but as usual no one had listened. Two more cars and a shed had burned while they were chasing their tails, and within the shed had burned a boy named Daniel Taylor. Who was—or had been—seventeen, with a history of trouble at school including setting a fire in one of the middle school bathrooms once upon a time. And the only subject he'd shown any interest or aptitude in was chemistry.

"So I want everyone to take the rest of the night off," Dawson said with a sigh as he wrapped up the analysis. "We'll head home tomorrow, and we can do the case write-ups when we get back."

"Well, one bomb never made it into someone's car, anyway," Thornburg said. "We can take credit for that much."

Beth snorted. "That bomb was never meant for a car, he was escalating and miscalculated. And as for credit, we could have ended it two weeks ago—" without the body of a dead kid, arsonist or not, on their hands—"if either of you had any actual investigative skill."

Rilke curled his lip. "'Escalation'? Please."

"Do you seriously think that that shed was his staging point for building bombs?" she demanded. Of course, knowing Rilke, he probably had, but…. "It was thirty-some miles from his house in a location without easy access, and no material was found there beyond the bomb itself. No, that was a test run for burning buildings, pure and simple."

"At least he's dead."

"At least—?"

"Take the rest of the night _off_," Dawson interrupted as Beth started to gain volume, and she clenched her teeth over what she really wanted to say and pushed herself away from the wall.

Dawson wasn't the worst team leader she'd ever had, but he had a bad habit of letting the majority rule, and she'd more than had it with Rilke and Thornburg. Rilke had been bad enough on his own, with his assumptions that the easiest answer was always the right one and never mind whether he'd arrived at that answer by logic or a damn magic eight ball, but since Thornburg had joined the team a few months ago he'd become almost insufferable. Of course, the two of them probably thought the same about her, but at least her deductions made sense and she didn't say damn stupid things like it was good that a kid—a kid who, despite an unsettling knack with explosives and the very high probability of escalation hanging over their heads, hadn't actually caused anything more than property damage to date—was dead. And as far as the rest of the team…well, she didn't mind Purros, but that was because he spent most of his time with his nose buried in his computer. When he decided to join the real world, he tended to fall in with the other two. Kane was tolerable, but she was also barely a year out of the academy and tended to let the others run over her when she needed to stand up and say what was on her mind. Beth had tried to help, but given her relationships with the others it had done more harm than good, and obviously Dawson wasn't the best example when it came to growing a spine.

She heard Kane asking the others about dinner as she headed for the door, but she didn't bother to wait for an invitation. She'd get one, she didn't doubt that, but it would be made out of obligation and she'd end up spending the entire meal either being ignored or fielding subtle digs. Well, okay, she'd spend the meal being ignored or about five minutes ignoring subtle digs before she lost her temper, and she didn't see that ending well. It had been obvious almost since Thornburg joined the team that it was time for her to move on, and she'd put in her official application with Dawson's blessing just before this case had come up, but until she got that transfer she had to at least pretend to be able to get along with her current teammates.


	2. Options

_Thanks to everyone who read and Narwhayley and stilljustme for reviewing. Also, the cover for this story is still in progress...I like the current one, but it's just too dark and my photo-editing software was on the dead computer (because that's how it always goes)._

* * *

Although Mick spread the word to Prophet and Gina, between dinner and drinks at the bar across the street Sam forgot all about the director's visit. At least until he found the papers Fickler had left with him again the next evening when he was digging in his bag for a pen. With a shake of his head, he pulled out the pen he'd wanted—he didn't need to forget dish soap yet again when he went to the store tomorrow—along with the papers and his computer and headed for his couch. The printout had been more of an excuse for the director to stop by and make his point than anything else, for anyone that Sam didn't know personally he'd need their dossier to make any kind of judgment, but it was a place to start. And realistically, there _were_ a few weak spots in the team. The director wasn't wrong about that. Sam just didn't think that his odds of both finding someone who could both fill those needs and also fit into the offbeat dynamics of the team were very good.

He thumbed the laptop on and set it to the side before picking up the list of names again. Qualifications first, that was the easiest way to start narrowing things down, and the primary lack on the team was a numbers person. A real numbers person, not just Gina handling those tasks because she was their most recent academy graduate and had therefore had less time to forget than the rest of them. It wasn't that she couldn't do the work, Sam had been perfectly happy thus far, but it was no more her area of expertise than it was his and Mick and Prophet were even worse. And he knew that it wasn't something that she particularly enjoyed even if she'd never come right out and said anything. If he had to add another person to the team, that was a skill that he wanted.

Qualification number two, they could use someone with a little more knowledge about fringe types. It wasn't quite a critical lack since between the four of them they had a decent sampling, but someone who could rattle off the signs and symptoms of some of the more obscure mental issues would be helpful. Given the kinds of cases that the BAU got involved with, that sort of thing came up more frequently than one would expect.

Number three…it wasn't an _absolute_ requirement, certainly not something that he'd prioritize over the first two, but it wouldn't be a bad thing to have another female agent on the team. With some cases—or more specifically some victims—having a man involved in the interview was less than ideal, and as intelligent as Gina was, solo victim interviews weren't something that a person six months out of the academy had any business doing.

That led to directly to qualification number four, though, and that was the one that was the most likely to cause issues because they needed another experienced agent. Experienced as in someone who'd been with the bureau for considerably longer than the just shy of a year that Mick and Prophet had, never mind Gina's six months. So far they'd gotten lucky, but eventually bureaucracy was bound to rear its obnoxious head either in the form of a local who wasn't happy with the BAU being called in or another FBI team that they crossed paths with, and Sam did not want to have to deal with was an argument over seniority in the middle of a case. Especially if he had to go one way and the rest of his team another. It would be less of an issue if Prophet had a full agent's badge, given his age Sam doubted that it would occur to anyone to question whether he had the years at the FBI to match, but since he didn't and Mick and Gina were both relatively young….

The last thing that he wanted to do was bring in someone who would disrupt the team's balance, though. Mick and Prophet might be relatively new to the FBI but neither was _in_experienced and wouldn't appreciate being treated as such. They might let it slide for a little bit, but Mick especially had a limit past which he would not be pushed. And despite her youth, Gina was still a lot further along than most recruits would be in the short amount of time that she'd been with them.

He typed in his password quickly and then returned his attention to the list as he waited for the FBI database to load. He didn't recognize most of the names, which wasn't really a surprise given the size of the bureau, and more than half of the specialties listed weren't really applicable anyway. Of the names that he did recognize, there were none that he thought would fit particularly well, and when he reached the last page without seeing anyone promising he started to wonder if he would have to look elsewhere.

He pulled his computer over and began scrolling through the database of available agents anyway, just in case there was someone he'd missed. Or someone who had more specialties beyond the basic headers in the list that the director had printed out.

"Wait, Griffith?" He scrolled back up quickly. He'd almost missed it at first, and when he checked the paper list he realized that he'd missed it there entirely—Griffith wasn't a particularly uncommon surname, and he'd always assumed that Beth was short for Elizabeth—but when he looked, the specialties and amount time with the bureau were about right. But he'd run into her at that conference up in Boston what, four or five months ago? No, it had to have been at least six because Gina hadn't yet finished at the academy, but he definitely didn't remember her mentioning that she was looking for a transfer. Then again, she might not have considered it worth mentioning. If Beth didn't hold the bureau record for the highest number of transfers between teams, she had to be in the top ten.

Beth actually fit qualifications one and two well, when he thought about. As he recalled she was stronger on fringe types, which was partly why she'd ended up in counterterrorism, but numbers came easily to her and unlike Gina she enjoyed that kind of thing. On the other hand, she didn't fit qualification three. Well, not that she wasn't female, obviously she was, but her personality wasn't one that lent itself very well to dealing with victims. She could probably do it if she had to, but…. He shook his head. As it stood, he and Gina were going in together in those situations with Gina acting as primary, and if it wasn't a perfect solution, it was working well enough. There was a reason that another female agent hadn't been first in his list of requirements.

Beth had the time with the bureau that the others lacked, too, and honestly, Sam would like to see someone try to bully her into something over as arbitrary a qualification as seniority. Just for the sheer entertainment value of watching her verbally eviscerate them. Unfortunately, despite the fact that she valued intelligence over most things and wasn't likely to take issue with any of his team for being new additions, fitting in might still be a problem for her. A good part of the reason that she got transferred so often was that even in a good mood she was about as tactful as a two-by-four to the head, and while he'd never minded—he found it kind of refreshing to be around someone who said exactly what she thought—it wasn't something that everyone could or would take in stride.

Beth and Prophet would probably get along all right, if nothing else because Beth was rarely deliberately offensive and with one single exception that wouldn't apply to Beth in a million years Prophet was one of the most easygoing men that Sam knew. Gina was still finding her footing in a lot of ways, though, and Sam didn't want her intimidated into staying silent when she should be speaking up. And he could already see Beth and Mick butting heads.

Still…. He glanced down at Beth's dossier again. If they could get past that, and he thought that they probably could once they'd had a chance to size each other up, Beth would be a pretty good addition. Assuming that she was interested. She'd been in threat assessment for a while, and the BAU was a little different.

He checked the time and then pulled out his cell. He hadn't talked to her since they'd skipped out on the last few hours of that conference in favor of some food that hadn't been cooked in a gallon of grease and a chance to catch up, but he had her number, and he might as well ask before starting on any paperwork.

* * *

Beth didn't even notice her cell phone ringing at first. The trip back had taken longer than it should have this morning, and while she'd finished her report in record time, mostly because she'd had about all of her teammates that she could stand, she'd arrived home to an apartment that had once again become a hazmat center in the couple weeks that she'd been gone. She would have sworn that she'd just done a load of laundry before she'd left, but there were no clean towels and the hamper was full. She'd obviously forgotten to start the dishwasher on her way out yet again, and several plates had gotten together to start a small, questionable garden. Plus a layer of dust had once again accumulated across everything, and as always, the carpet needed vacuuming.

She'd ended up falling asleep on the sofa for a few hours since her sheets were mixed in with the rest of her laundry before waking up and starting on the chores, and at first she thought that the ringing was part of whatever was currently playing on the radio. When she realized that it wasn't, she frowned. "What the hell?" If anything else had blown up in the last eight hours, she was going to hurt somebody. If an eight year old had decided to play with matches and it required her to interact with any of her teammates he was dead meat when she got her hands on him. But it wasn't like she was winning any awards for her social life, either.

She finally located her cell buried under a pile of yet-to-be-folded laundry, and although the ringing had stopped by the time she found it, the name in the missed calls log was familiar. Unexpected, maybe, but not unwelcome, and she pushed a pile of junk mail off the couch so she had a place to sit and hit redial.

"Cooper," he said a moment later.

"Hey, Sam, it's Beth. You called?"

"I did. I was hoping I'd catch you, but when I got voicemail I figured you were out."

"No, we got back from upstate this morning. I'm just trying to make my apartment livable again, and it took me a few minutes to find my phone. What's up? Are you in New York?" That was usually when they called each other, when one ended up in whatever city the other was in on a case or if they happened to run into each other at a conference or whatever, but half past eight on a Saturday evening was an odd time to be arranging lunch. Although right now she wouldn't object to talking to someone who didn't make her want to beat her head against a brick wall, and Sam was a pretty good option.

"No, I'm still down in DC, but do you have a couple minutes to talk?"

"Yeah, sure." She frowned. "Why, did something happen?" As she recalled, the last time a conversation with him had started like that had been when he'd been considering taking a leave of absence from the FBI. She still thought that going over there had been a dumb thing for him to do—she'd been in domestic counterterrorism more than long enough to get called in for consults on international and had a better idea than most of what he'd seen—so she really hoped that he wasn't planning on a second trip.

"You do know that paranoia isn't a survival trait, right?" he asked, sounding more amused than anything.

"It is if you're me."

"No, things are actually going fairly well here," he said, and she could practically hear the grin in his voice. "But there's an empty spot on my team that the director has been after me to fill, and…well, I saw your name on the list of available agents. I don't suppose you'd be interested?"

"Are you serious?" It wasn't exactly polite, maybe, but that was about the last thing that she'd expected to hear.

"I am. We need someone with a head for numbers, and some expertise in fringe elements wouldn't hurt. And you wouldn't have put your name in if you were happy where you are."

"I should have done that earlier," she admitted. There weren't too many people that she would have admitted that to, but it was more than true.

"That bad?" he asked.

"The usual." And never mind the fact that she had a usual. "I just waited too long to put in for a transfer time."

"You said upstate…that'd be the string of car bombings that have been in the news on and off?"

"Yeah."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. It was just a dumb kid. He made a mistake when he tried escalating and took himself out along with an old shed. It shouldn't have come to that; we _should_ have had him a week ago, but…." She sighed. "You're serious about the job? I mean, you haven't had a few too many, dialed the wrong number, or suffered a recent head injury? You do have an unfortunate habit of sparring with sticks."

"I'm a little old for drunk dialing, I only have one Beth Griffith in my phone, and no, I haven't gotten hit in the head in any recent sparring matches. I'm pretty good at avoiding that sort of thing. Now, I'll grant that it would be _nice_ if you could refrain from calling elected officials idiots to their faces—"

"Hey, that only happened once," she protested, and then frowned. "Twice. Well, I guess three if you include Anchorage." Her frown deepened. "Does the thing with the taxi count? I'm pretty sure he was appointed so I don't think that counts."

That got a chuckle. "The point is that I know you. I said it'd be nice if you could refrain, not that I'd be surprised if you couldn't. And it doesn't change the fact that you've got expertise we could use."

"There are what, two other people on your team?" she asked after a moment. "Or, no, it should be three by now." He'd talked about them a little when they'd run into each at the conference up in Boston a few months back. "There's the kid you brought back with you, a guy with a weird nickname, and then you were going to grab a girl out of West Point as soon as she finished at the academy."

"That's them, although they generally go by Mick, Prophet, and Gina," Sam agreed.

"What do they think about this?"

"They're annoyed that the director is forcing the issue but have nothing against you personally as far as I know."

Probably because they hadn't met her yet, but she did appreciate that Sam didn't hedge on questions.

"Will you at least think about it?" he asked.

"I don't really need to think about it," she said after a minute. "I'm willing to give it a trial run if you are." She'd be an idiot not to take the offer because she clearly wasn't going to be able to stay in New York much longer—it was more than just her current team, the office in general was becoming uncomfortable—and she'd burned enough bridges on the other teams that she'd been on in the past that going back to one of them wasn't really an option either. She hadn't exactly sat down and started ticking off names, at least not yet, but there probably weren't many people left in the FBI who'd take a chance on her.

"I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't," he said. "I know it'll take at least a couple weeks to get a transfer approved, but do you think you could get it arranged with your team lead to come down and say hello? Or if we get a case join us? I know you've got responsibilities up there, but if it doesn't conflict…."

"Oh, I doubt I'll get any objections to anything that gets me out of the office."


	3. Meetings

_Thanks to everyone who read and stilljustme, Narwhayley, and a guest for reviewing._

* * *

"Wait, you actually found somebody?" Mick asked. "Who? What's he like?" He seemed more interested than annoyed, which meant that Sam had been right and Mick had been more irritated with the director than the idea of a new teammate. That was a good start, at least.

Prophet's expression was more guarded, but given what little Sam had heard about his experiences at the academy—nothing specific from Prophet himself, but despite the fact that they were based out of the gym Sam wasn't deaf to the rumors that had made the rounds at the bureau proper, and Mick had hinted at a few things that he'd noticed as well—that was probably to be expected. And there were some curiosity there too, as there was with Gina.

"She," he corrected. "Her name is Beth Griffith." He didn't miss the slight increase in interest in Gina's expression, although there was no sign of recognition on any of their faces at the name. Then again, there was no reason that there should be. "She's been in threat assessment for the last five or ten years, but she's been with the FBI for almost twenty so she's got a little experience in everything. Including numerical analysis, which I think we can all agree that we need."

Gina murmured in agreement, and Sam bit back a smile.

Prophet tilted his head. "So you've worked with her before, then?"

"Never directly, but we've known each other for quite a while."

"Okay, then, what's _she_ like?" Mick asked.

"Very smart. Very direct." He shook his head, debating how much he should say. He didn't want to bias them, but a little warning probably wouldn't hurt. "She calls it exactly how she sees it regardless of whether it's the polite thing to do or not."

"When do we get to meet her?" he pressed.

"She's going to try to catch a train down to say hello sometime later this week, and if we get a case there's a chance she'll be able to be there, but she's still officially in her current assignment until the end of the month."

"You said that was threat assessment?" Prophet asked.

Sam nodded. "Domestic counterterrorism, specifically. Their last case was a series of car bombings in upstate New York. It's been in the news on and off." He caught the darkening of Mick's eyes at that, but there was no point in saying anything. Mick and bombs just weren't a good combination. Hell, _he_ and bombs weren't a good combination after Fallujah. So far they hadn't been assigned to any cases like that, for which he was grateful, but he doubted that that luck would continue to hold indefinitely. Especially since they were about to get one of the top counterterrorism experts in the bureau on their team. He hid a wince. He hadn't really considered that aspect of things.

Fortunately none of the others seemed to notice his sudden hesitation, and Gina was the next to speak. "So I take it that 'if we get a case' means we haven't got anything new pending?"

"Actually we've got a reminder that not only are we behind on our paperwork, we're approaching dangerously behind for the spree killer down in Dallas. Reports for that one are due by end-of-day tomorrow, and they'd like the other two by Thursday."

Mick and Prophet groaned in unison, and Gina looked like she wanted to join them. Sam would have been tempted as well, but he'd gotten his groaning out of the way earlier when first seen the email. Not that there was much that they could have done to get the reports written sooner…they'd been pulled almost directly from Dallas to Greensburg—no murders on that one, but a string of robbery and assaults with levels of violence that had been escalating rapidly enough in that direction that everyone had realized it—and then had had barely more than a weekend of downtime before a body had turned up in Las Vegas with wounds matching those on two other prostitutes found dead in the previous six months. They'd just gotten back from that one last week, and Sam was fully expecting to be called back in two or three months because they'd made almost no headway—it was notoriously difficult to get working girls to talk even when you were trying to help, and the local police reaction to the first two murders hadn't helped—and they'd left when the final trail had gone cold and the locals had been forced to reassign their liaison elsewhere. Still, the fact that they hadn't really had any other options didn't make having three reports to get done at once any more fun.

"And don't forget, they've changed the standard format yet again so grab a new template before you start," he added.

"Someone in that office has _way_ too much time on his hands," Prophet muttered, turning and grabbing his computer out of his bag before boosting himself up onto his desk.

"Can't we just make Prophet write them all and then send in four copies of each?" Mick asked. "I don't think anybody actually reads more than the agent name and case number when they're filing them anyway."

"Why do I have to write them?" Prophet objected. "You write them."

"I don't want to write them. And Gina's standing right beside me so I can't nominate her. Besides, you don't get those stupid squiggly lines showing up under half of your words while you're typing. It's annoying."

Prophet smirked. "Well, if you'd stop inserting 'U's in strange and unexpected places they probably wouldn't be such an issue."

"Shut it, man, you're the one who throws in zeds where any sane person would use an s." He sighed and turned for his desk and then paused and turned back. "And colour does so have a U in it."

Sam and Gina grinned along with Prophet at that one, and Mick scowled at all of them.

"Fine, see if I invite any of you over the next time I decide to do a movie night."

* * *

"Las Vegas? I should be able to catch a flight in a hour or two," Beth said.

"You're sure it's okay?"

"Trust me, Sam, Dawson's actually expending _effort_ to clear the red tape out of the way. They're more than ready to see me gone. Forward me whatever files you've got, will you?"

"Will do."

Late notice or not, there were enough commercial flights going between New York and Las Vegas that she was able to get a seat without any hassle, and if first class wasn't an option, her badge meant that it wasn't hard to get assigned to a seat against a bulkhead so no one was sitting behind her. After a glance to the side to make sure that the girl next to her was thoroughly engrossed in whatever the in-flight movie was, she flipped her computer open and pulled up what Sam had sent. It was a messy crime scene, that was for sure, but there was definitely more of a sense of someone playing out a specific ritual than unintentional overkill. Especially since all three previous victims had the same patterns. Which fit with what Sam and the rest of his team had determined.

The timeline, though…she tapped her pen against her computer lightly and scowled at the man in front of her when he turned to glare at her for it. He looked away first.

It was easy enough to see why Sam's team had been recalled last week; they'd hit a brick wall as far as leads to follow and the FBI didn't have the agents to spare to sit on a case gone cold while there were active cases they could be working, but while the killer should absolutely have struck again, he shouldn't have done it anywhere near this soon. Sam had figured two to three months before the next body turned up, and she might have leaned towards the shorter end of that estimate given that serial killers did have a habit of shortening their timelines as they grew more confident, but another kill this close to the last…no. Even for an escalation, the timeline was wrong. Still, the markings were the same, including several details that the police hadn't released to the public, so the odds were that they were dealing with the same killer rather than a copycat.

She spent the rest of the flight scanning through the reports from the previous murders, but the FBI hadn't been called in for either of the first two killings so there were fewer details than she would have preferred. Although it was entirely possible that that was due more to the fact that the girls had been prostitutes than the organization involved, as much as she hated it when crap like that interfered with an investigation. And while the last report was much more thorough, there were no leads that jumped out at her that Sam's team hadn't already run down.

There was a message waiting for her from Sam with an address when the plane landed, and the taxi ride was shorter than she'd expected. Of course, it didn't end where she'd expected either, and she found herself checking her sidearm automatically.

"Miss, are you sure that this is the right place?" the taxi driver asked.

And the taxi driver asking that question made her feel even better about it. She checked the address again. "This is it." If it had been anyone but Sam who'd directed her here she might have questioned whether she was being set up for something, but….

"All right," he said dubiously, accepting her card.

There was nothing like a doorbell on what passed for a front entrance, but the padlock was hanging open and the door swung inwards easily enough at her shove. Two heads turned in her direction as she entered.

"Hey, Beth," Sam greeted with a smile. "It's good to see you again. I'm glad you're here."

"It's good to see you too, but you are aware that police stations generally provide a place to work, right? You know, offices?"

He shrugged. "After our last visit we decided that we might have a better chance of getting someone to talk to us if we aren't hauling them back to a police station every time we need to do a long interview."

"Right, because condemned warehouses always make me feel more comfortable. For the record, this scared the _taxi driver_."

The man setting up a computer behind Sam snorted, and she caught a flash of teeth as he shook his head.

"It was the best the department could manage," Sam said. "I guess they took down a meth lab here about six months back."

"Even better."

Sam's smile widened, and he gestured to the other man. "Beth, Prophet; Prophet, Beth."

"Nice to meet you," the man said, stepping away from the computer and offering a hand.

She shook it automatically, sizing him up at best she could with a look. She'd taken a quick look at the dossiers of all of Sam's team, although she'd been under the impression that she'd have time to meet them face to face before getting called out on a case so she hadn't dug as much as she might have otherwise, but there hadn't been much in his anyway. Certainly nothing that explained his unusually late appearance at the FBI and shortcut into the BAU. Like Sam he was dressed casually, and judging by the lines forming around his eyes and the hair starting to thin and go to grey he was probably within a few years of their ages. Average height, average weight…there was intelligence behind his eyes, but there damn well should be so that wasn't much to go on. Then again, she knew as well as anyone that appearance didn't mean a damn thing.

"Hey, Proph, is the satellite hookup up and running yet?" another man, this one younger and with a definite accent, asked, sticking his head around an interior doorway.

"Eh, a little to the left," Prophet responded without looking.

"I hate you, mate." He turned his head back in the direction he'd come from. "Hey, Gina, it's good!"

"Good." A woman stepped into the doorway beside him a moment later, brushing at her something on her shirt. "They really need to invent a better system for transporting those things."

"Gina, Mick, this is Beth Griffith," Sam said, waving them into the room. "Beth, Gina LaSalle and Mick Rawson."

Not that she wouldn't have been able to figure that out for herself despite the fact that their clothes were just as casual as Sam's and Prophet's, but she nodded anyway and shook the hands they offered. There hadn't been much in Mick's dossier either, but from what little Sam had said she knew why his was redacted. Or, more likely, had never been filled in in the first place. He was about the same height as Prophet although probably a good ten years younger and with a wirier build, and there was definitely a challenge in his eyes when he gripped her hand. She met the gaze squarely. Challenge she could handle, especially since she got the distinct impression that that was his personality as much as anything.

Unlike the two men, Gina was taller than average, enough that Beth was pretty sure she was going to get a crick in her neck talking to _everyone_ on this team, but she was young and there was nothing like the experience Mick had to offset it. Beth couldn't help but see a flash of Kane in her despite the fact that the two of them looked nothing alike, and she hoped that this one had a spine. Then again, her dossier was a lot more complete than the other two, enough for Beth to know that she'd survived West Point and then the FBI academy at the top of her class, neither of which was an easy feat. And Sam's judgment was a whole hell of a lot better than Dawson's.

"All right, I think that's everything we need set up here," Sam said. "Mick, Gina, check out the latest crime scene. Prophet, you're good for another walk around the neighborhood with our liaison?"

"Good to go," he agreed.

"And everyone has a key? Uh, Beth, this is yours." He grabbed one off a table and tossed it to her and then tilted his head. "Up for an autopsy?"

She shrugged her pack off her shoulder and stuck it under a table where a couple others sat before dropping the key in her pocket. "Sure. Great way to spend a Friday afternoon."


	4. Theories

_Thanks to everyone who read and stilljustme, Narwhayley, blue dogs rock, and Doc blu xx for reviewing__._

* * *

"Messy," Beth said dryly as the ME pulled the sheet down revealing a young woman's body. Her torso and limbs were covered with a myriad of cuts far too precisely placed to be accidental, and there was deep bruising on her wrists and ankles.

Sam nodded, fighting down the whisper in the back of his mind telling him that this was their fault. His fault. That he should have worked harder, worked smarter, caught the killer after the last victim before the monster had stumbled upon this poor girl. Intellectually he knew that there was nothing else that they could have done, that he and his team had exhausted every avenue of pursuit available to them, but knowing that fact and accepting it were two very different things. Especially when you were looking at a victim who couldn't be more then eighteen. "All pre-mortem?" he asked the medical examiner, forcing those thoughts to the back of his mind. Given the previous kills he knew what the answer would be, but habit had him confirming the results.

"The injuries to the extremities, yes, but with the exception of the killing blow the rest of cuts were made after she was already dead. Between two and six hours afterwards, by my estimate."

Sam twisted back towards her at the same time that Beth's head jerked up. That was _not_ the answer that he'd been expecting.

"You're sure?" Beth asked.

It was the same question that was on the tip of Sam's tongue, and he waited for the ME's response. With the previous three victims, the unsub had been careful—sickeningly careful—to keep the victims alive during the torture. The killing blow to each had only been delivered when there had been so much blood loss that the victims wouldn't have survived anyway.

"Very," she said with a nod, holding out a closed folder. "This is my full report. The later incisions to the torso are almost completely bloodless."

Sam waved it over to Beth, as he leaned over to check what the ME was saying for himself. Not that he disbelieved her, but that was such a radical shift in behavior on the part of their unsub…. "An accident?" he suggested after a moment. "The unsub was just getting started on part two and the knife went too deep?"

"He _accidentally_ drove six inches of steel directly through a woman's heart?" Beth asked, looking up. "That's a hell of a slip. Especially since the nonfatal wounds on all of the other victims were concentrated on the abdomen and extremities, not the chest."

"A quick kill isn't his pattern, though." He tapped a hand against the table lightly. "She got free of the restraints, somehow, after the first session? Tried to fight?"

"I doubt she'd have been able to put up much of a fight, but it might have been enough to push him over the edge," Beth said after a minute, returning her attention the victim. "And the previous kills could easily have set the compulsion deep enough that he had to finish the pattern even after she was already gone."

She didn't sound like she entirely believed it, but then, neither did he. The ugly bruising on her wrists and ankles screamed 'restraint' to anyone who knew anything about injuries, and there was no indication that she'd managed to slip them. That didn't mean that he had a better explanation, though. At least not yet.

"That's your copy," the ME said as Beth started to hand the report back. "And I've sent a copy to the local precinct as—" A ringing from the other room cut her off, and she turned. "—as well. I should get that. Do you mind?"

"That's fine, I think we're good for now," Sam said. "But would it be all right if we spent a few more minutes here?"

"Of course. Let me know if there's anything else that I can do for you."

Sam nodded and then circled the body again, looking for anything he'd missed on his first examination. There was something about those cuts on the abdomen…. "Beth, you read the other reports, right?"

"Yes."

She did him the courtesy of leaving the 'obviously' unspoken, even if it was pretty clear in her tone. "How do the cuts that were pre-mortem compare?"

She flipped forward a few pages in the report. "Shallow." Her eyes narrowed. "Too shallow. I take it back, if this is all he did, she'd absolutely have been able to put up a fight. She'd have been in an incredible amount of pain, but even in combination these cuts aren't deep enough to cause enough blood loss to disable her, and there's no way dehydration or starvation would have set in that fast." A pause. "That assumes she managed to get out of the restraints, though, and there's no evidence of that."

"More indication to the contrary given the lack of defensive wounds," Sam agreed. If nothing else, fingernails that long should never have survived a fight intact. "So, again, why the change? Maybe it was personal?"

"You mean something specific that made him pick her?" Beth stared at the woman on the table for a minute. "But height, weight, race, age, even hair color, they're all consistent with the other victims."

"The other victims and a good portion of the rest of the population, but maybe there was some kind of interaction between them."

"As in they ran into each other at the grocery store or something like that?"

He nodded. "Maybe literally. In a confrontation, her similarity to the other victims would work against her."

"Still, ritual is ritual, especially at this level," Beth said with a shake of her head. "Even if there _was_ an interaction that made him focus on her way ahead of schedule, the cuts on the last three victims were way too precise for him to discard the whole torture sequence for the sake of a temper tantrum."

"He didn't discard it. You said it yourself; the compulsion could have been what drove him to finish the job even after she was dead."

"But even the depth of the cuts that were pre-mortem don't mesh with his previous kills," she argued. "The locations might have been identical, but he pretty solidly broke pattern here."

It was a fair point, and Sam frowned. There had to be something different about this girl—something that went deeper than just having made their unsub angry—but he wasn't seeing it yet. He stared at the body for a minute longer and then reached out to pull the sheet back up. "Let's get back to base. We need her timeline and whatever background we can get, and then we can start running some comparisons."

* * *

"Lot of suspicious looks, not a lot of talking," Prophet said with a shake of his head. "About the same as our last visit. Got a first name, at least—Nina, and from a couple people so I'd say it's as legit as we're going to get without a fingerprint match—but no last, and as far as when she was grabbed all we could find was a shopkeeper who _might_ have chased her and another woman off three days ago." Prophet seemed to share Beth's habit of working while perched, shifting a little further onto the table as he scanned through his notes. "Mike Thomas from Dave's Mini-Mart on the corner of Fifth and Green. A 'yeah, that looks like the one' on her when I showed him the photo but the best he could do on the friend was 'tallish and kind of red haired.'"

"Tallish and kind of red haired?" Mick was in a chair, but it was currently balanced precariously on its back legs and Beth really hoped he wasn't about to crack his skull open on the cement floor of the building as he leaned back further to look at Prophet.

"That's what the man said. The only security camera in the store hasn't worked in ten years, of course, so no help there, but if all else fails we can set him up with a sketch artist and cross our fingers."

"Well, if he's right and it was her, three days means barely two days between the time she was grabbed and when her body was found," Gina said. Unlike the two men—or Beth, for that matter—she was seated properly at the center table, but she didn't show any hesitation in speaking up which raised Beth's estimation of her a few notches. "For some reason he cut his timetable by more than half, and that's on top of the shortening of time between attacks. I mean, we all knew it was coming, but it shouldn't have been now."

"Maybe something set him off," Mick said, letting his chair fall forward again with a thump. "Her appearance is the same as the other victims; maybe they had some kind of confrontation that triggered his compulsion."

"That's what I was thinking, but the timeline isn't all that's changed," Sam said, finally turning his attention away from the chalkboard on the other side of the room.

His focus might have been more understandable if there had been anything written on the chalkboard, but as it stood Beth just hoped he wasn't beating himself up too bad over this latest victim. At least he'd clearly been following along with the conversation.

"It wasn't in the initial report," Sam continued, "but from what the ME gave us about half of the cuts on the latest victim were post-mortem."

Prophet's eyes narrowed slightly. "I could go with the confrontation escalating his timeline, but what the hell would cause _that_ kind of change in MO?"

"Maybe he was interrupted." Gina suggested. "The timeline is wrong enough that if he did grab her spur-of-the-moment he wouldn't have been prepared to keep her for days like he did the others."

"And even if he was interrupted, the whole ritual he's developed could have driven him to stash her and then go back and finish the rest of the pattern later," Mick said with a nod.

An interruption was a possibility that Beth hadn't considered, and it was a more than fair explanation for the abrupt change in the kill portion of the timeline, but she shook her head anyway. "That still doesn't account for him altering the depth of the initial cuts. Even the ones that were pre-mortem were less than half as deep as any of the cuts on the other victims." She didn't like suggesting the idea of a copycat, especially in a case like this where the injuries were so damn precise that someone would practically have had to be working off an autopsy report to get it right, but that was where her suspicions were starting to turn.

For a moment Mick, Gina, and Prophet looked startled, and she couldn't really blame them—aside from the fact that they were clearly accustomed to working as a foursome, she'd been sitting on the table across from Prophet's and keeping her mouth shut as she watched them interact—but Sam spoke before any of them could.

"Unless they were just that."

"What?"

"Well, we've got between five and seven days with each of the previous victims between the time they disappeared and when they were killed and dumped, right? And we know that he tortures his victims. What if part of his ritual involves drawing out that torture?"

""We know he draws it out," Gina said with a frown. "He starts with the extremities and moves inwards; we've seen that since the first victim."

"We know he starts at the extremities and moves inwards, but each wound might not be from just one cut." Prophet said slowly. "You get a sharp enough knife and that kind of thing would be easy for the ME to miss, especially since we know he's keeping them restrained."

"And between the starvation and the severe dehydration they wouldn't have much fight left after the first day or two anyway," Beth added after a moment of thought. If he'd reopened and deepened each cut multiple times…it made a sick kind of sense. She pulled her pack up onto the table beside her and dug out her computer. There had been pictures from the original autopsies included in the files that Sam had sent her, but when she'd originally looked at them she'd been more interested in comparing patterns than examining the individual cuts. And she'd almost bet that the ME's had been doing the same, using the tissue at the opening of each cut to time it rather than examining the internal tissue as well.

"Did we get anything new from the crime scene?" Sam asked as she turned it on.

"Just another dump site," Mick said with a shake of his head. "Body stripped and dumped in an alley, and once again no restraints found despite the bruise patterns. The CSI team collected what they could, but I'm not holding my breath."

"It was within a three block radius of the other dump sites, too," Gina added, "so if he was interrupted, it obviously didn't affect his disposal pattern. And, of course, nobody saw anything, heard anything, or just generally knows anything."

"Square one, then, except for the change in timeline," Sam said with a nod. "We're going to have to expand our search and try and find this friend, even if it is a long shot."


	5. Clues

_Thanks to everyone who read and blue dogs rock and Doc blu xx for reviewing._

* * *

And that was it. Sam rubbed his forehead and flipped back through the images again. The evidence was faint—nonexistent in many of the photographs; Prophet had been right about what a sharp enough knife could conceal —but now that he was looking he could make out a few he could make out places where cuts had started to heal and then reopened. So, at least part of the profile was consistent, and the unsub had likely been interrupted rather than making a radical change in his pattern. Of course, there was still the timing _between_ abductions to account for, not to mention the actual unsub to find, and he looked again at the image on top—Nina's face—and sighed. He still thought that a confrontation was the most likely, but there were other possible explanations that they couldn't rule out yet. Among them…. He swiveled his chair towards Prophet. "Do you think we could have missed other victims?"

"Hm?" Prophet lifted his head to look at Sam and one shoulder twitched. "Could have, I guess. This part of the city there are plenty of places to lose a body, and not a lot of reports get filed when working girls go missing. Doesn't seem real likely considering that he practically put the ones that we have found on display, though."

That was the same conclusion that Sam had come to, and when they'd been out last time he'd had Garcia do a search for similar cases in the surrounding area and across the country and had come up empty. Well, empty with regard to the particular pattern they were looking for, anyway. "Any luck with that surveillance video?"

"Nah." He held up a hand with a stack of photos. "I've got the stills here, and from what the clerk told us I think I can tell which two are _supposed_ to be Nina and her friend, but neither of them is much more than a blur so I can't call it either way. Mick's checking the actual video now, but I don't think even his eyes are going to cut it with a tape that bad."

Sam nodded. The security tape from an ATM halfway down the block had been a long shot in the first place, but if they could at least confirm Nina's last known location it would be something. "Either way, make sure to tag a copy for Garcia. She may be able to get something out of it."

"Already done. Can I take a look at the autopsy photos?"

Sam handed the folder over. He'd seen what he needed to, at least for now.

Prophet took it with a nod of thanks, putting the collection of stills aside, and Sam turned his attention to the rest of his team. As Prophet had said Mick was in front of the computer, his nose far closer to the screen than it normally would be as he stepped through the frames, and Sam had no desire to interrupt. Mick had the best eye of all of them for visual clues; if anyone could pull information from a blurry surveillance tape without computer enhancement, it would be him.

Beth and Gina had their heads together over something on the far table, and he let his eyes rest there for a minute. The two of them seemed to be getting along all right, or at least Gina was talking and Beth wasn't showing any inclination to interrupt which he took as a good sign. And right now he hoped that someone had some good news. He pushed himself up out of his seat and went to join them. "Anything?"

"Maybe." Beth gestured to the roll of paper spread out on the table and signaled for Gina to go ahead.

"This is map of garbage routes," Gina said. "We ordered them the last time we were out, but it never came to anything."

"Right, all of the women were dumped immediately after trash day in alleys with dumpsters, but it turned out they were on two different routes, and when Garcia had checked, all four drivers had had pretty solid alibis." They'd known that the unsub had to be using a vehicle—aside from the logistical difficulties, a man carrying the body of a naked woman through the streets would stand out even in the middle of the night—and they'd suspected that it was a commercial vehicle since commuter traffic in the area generally stuck to the garages, but there had been the question of whether the dumpsters were actually part of the patter or just convenient. Garbage trucks had seemed like a good possible lead at first even if the dumpsters _weren't_ part of the ritual, but there were always leads that didn't pan out, and when the checks had come up clean, they'd moved on.

"But there wasn't a dumpster in the alley that Nina was dumped in," Beth said. "It's in the next alley over. They moved it about nine months ago." She shrugged slightly. "Fire codes, I'm guessing, based on the construction going on in the building beside it but I don't think it much matters under the circumstances."

Sam tilted his head. That was…interesting.

"And up until a year ago all the dumpsters were a part of the same route and serviced by the same garbage collection agency," Gina said. "But they had some tax issues and ended up going out of business."

"Who had the route the dumpsters used to be on?"

"Tax issues in this case means that it was a cash-only business," Beth said.

"So no payroll." He shook his head. "I don't suppose it was their only cash-only business and they were happy to list their employees in their court documents?"

Does that ever actually happen?" Gina asked curiously as Beth snorted.

"Not generally," Sam said. "But we can always pay a visit to the ringleader, if we need to. Assuming that we know where he is."

"Well, he's in the California penal system somewhere at the moment, the verdict came down three months ago, but the court contact still hasn't responded to my request so maybe this'll be a first," Gina said.

* * *

It was almost certain that they'd have to make a prison visit in Beth's opinion, but they again, a full confession had happened once in her career. Only because the guy had been willing to admit to a lesser crime in hopes of keeping the police out of the chemical weapons lab in his basement, granted, but it was once.

Her opinion of Gina had gone up a hell of a lot in the couple hours they'd been going over the maps of the crime scenes and victim paths, though. Sam had said that they needed a numbers person, but even if it wasn't something that Gina particularly _liked_, she'd done a damn good job of marking the map up on their previous visit. Not quite the same technique that Beth would have used, maybe, but it was clear enough, and she was perfectly willing –and more to the point able—to defend her technique.

And the garbage truck lead had potential. It wasn't a blinking arrow by any stretch of the imagination, but four bodies on the same route, even if it was an old route…. She frowned. Actually, the first body hadn't turned up that much less than a year ago, now that she thought about it.

Sam was still looking at the map with Gina, and she pushed herself away from the table and went to dig through the older case files again. She'd already looked at the first case report a few times—what few details the police had bothered to gather, anyway—but there was always the possibility of something she'd missed.

"Hey, someone come take a look at this," Mick said suddenly while she was still searching for the right folder. "Proph, got a minute?"

Prophet pushed himself up off the table and headed in his direction, and Beth pulled the report she'd been looking for out and followed more out of curiosity than anything else.

"Look there." Mick tapped the computer screen. "Is that what I think it is?"

Prophet shook his head. "It's a blurry smudge, Mick, I don't see much of anything."

"You need glasses, mate."

"I _have_ glasses—contacts, anyway—and it doesn't look like anything to me either," Beth offered. Something buzzed behind her, but it wasn't her phone so she ignored it and concentrated on the screen.

Mick shook his head, but despite the offhand comment to Prophet his focus was obviously more on the video than taunting his teammates. "Just keep looking." He tapped a few buttons, and the image on screen shifted, zooming out to reveal the blurry image of Nina and her friend from the ATM camera and then zooming back in just as quickly. "Do you see it now? It's right there."

"I'm looking," Prophet said. "But I'm still not seeing anything."

Mick heaved a sigh. "Nina's girlfriend has an Adam's apple."

"What?" Prophet shifted again, blocking Beth's view of the screen, but she hadn't seen what Mick was gesturing to before and doubted she'd be able to see it now either so she didn't object.

"Right there," Mick said, reaching past Prophet to tap the screen a second time.

Prophet leaned back, shaking his head. "Still not seeing it, brother. Are you sure?"

"Yeah. This is the best view, when they turn to look at the taxi—guy he cut off must have honked or something—but I caught a hint of it in a couple of other shots too. I just didn't sort out what it was before."

"Hm." Prophet crossed his arms over his chest, staring at the screen, and then seemed to notice Beth again. "Oh, sorry."

He stepped back further and gestured her forward, but despite taking him up on the invitation she couldn't make out much more than what she'd already noted. Well, it was a throat, she could tell that much now that she'd seen the full image, but beyond that….

"So instead of a tall redheaded woman, we're looking for a tall redheaded cross-dresser," Prophet said, apparently willing to take Mick at his word. "That's something I guess."

"Except for the part where she may not be redheaded at all," Beth pointed out, deciding that she might as well give Mick the benefit of the doubt for now as well. It wasn't something she'd normally do with someone she didn't know, but Sam said he was sharp, and after all, the things they'd been asking so far hadn't gotten them any answers. And it was fair to say that if they hadn't been asking the right questions, it wasn't too likely that anyone in this neighborhood would go the extra mile to help them out. "Wigs, remember?"

"We can still try another canvas," Prophet said. "Even if it is a wig, it's probably one she wears pretty regularly. Anybody want to go for a walk?"

"Not you," Sam said, turning in their direction. "Gina finally got a call back from the courts, and it looks like we're going to need to visit Mr. Griggs at the Los Angeles County facility. I'm going to want you with me."

Prophet nodded.

"Beth, if Mick and Gina do the canvas, are you good to start digging through the trial records and see if you can pull out any kind of paper trail?" Sam asked. "They're going to email Gina all the documentation they have, but I'm not sure what it's going to consist of."

"I'll see what I can do, but if this was an IRS case they've probably already had forensic accountants all over it." Not to mention forensic everything else, given what other sorts of trouble large-scale cash only businesses often meant.

"Whatever you can get, conjecture included. We might need the ammunition."

She glanced at Gina. "Forward what they give you to me?"

Gina dipped her head and pulled her computer around.

"We better take a picture of Nina with us, boss," Prophet said suddenly. "And ones of the other girls too. If the location of the bodies had something to do with the original business and not just being used as either part of the ritual or a convenient dump site…." He shook his head. "I knew some wise guys inside, and none of them much liked loose ends."


End file.
